Buterin Suggests Ether Has Hard Cap of 120 Million

On April 1, one of Ethereum's constitutors Vitalik Buterin unexpectedly suggested agreeing on the general supply of the cyber-coin Ether – ETH. The 24-year-old programmer offered ETH’s supply to make up 120 million which is nearly two times more immense than the initial hard cap.

Buterin assumed that the cap could be a fraction of the following hard work. And there is a high likelihood that it would be the opening leg of the Casper streamlining.

Ether To Get A Hard Cap

Buterin announced his suggestion on
GitHub,
which is a forum for dev’s, on April 1. And what he offered does not seem to be a joke despite a significant date.

Particularly, the Ethereum’s co-constitutor said that the cap on the unit should be 120,204,432. That is a section the novel Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP). To be explicit, that is as twice as much as in the factual selling four years ago.

The dev "prophesies" the introduction of the hard cap within the following stage of the Casper upgrade. Concurrently, all the "bounties" in the sharing net would be redenominated to echo the hard cap as the closing supply of ETH.

Why Should The Ether Hard Cap Be There?

Also, in the blog, Buterin named the ground for offering the hard cap for coins.

For instance, he said that it should be done for guaranteeing the economic backbone of the whole Ethereum’s platform. That is especially important as other means of promoting a countervailing coin distribution is not efficient anymore. The same goes for considerable policy aims. Therefore, Buterin said, he offered a hard cap of the overall volume of Ether units.

By the way, what everybody has to know about hard caps is that they are fixed amounts of units and are indicated even before the commencement of ICO. When it is set, the units’ distribution cannot overcome this amount.
Ethereum
might betoken its own soon.

Buterin noted that there still is time to set a 120-million hard cap. But if it is too late to set this one and when the EIP is ratified, the following cap would be not less than 144,052,828.

As of writing, Coinmarketcap.com estimates the entire ETH supply to be over 98 million units.

What About Miners?

In his April 1 post, Buterin did not forget to refer to miners regarding rewards that will decrease for them. That will happen due to alterations in the proof-of-stake model. And that is, presumably, the part of the Casper streamlining, as it was said before.

Buterin also revealed that if Ethereum does not halt in operating with the proof-of-work model, "bounties" for miners will still go down little by little to the same clause.

Ether can be emitted annually, and the initial one made up to 18 million of units. Ethereum’s co-constitutor usually does not publicly
speak
on the platform’s financial rules. This blog for GitHub, if not to say, is one of the first Buterin’s suggestions of such a kind.

However, the EIP is only a scheme, and there is no terminal decision on the Ether’s hard cap.